modrobert writes: "TheFloW has posted an extensive write-up for the h-encore exploit chain right after Sony released firmware v3.69 for PS Vita which patched this kernel exploit. Quote: 'h-encore, where h stands for hacks and homebrews, is the second public jailbreak for the PS Vita which supports the newest firmwares 3.65, 3.67 and 3.68. It allows you to make kernel- and user-modifications, change the clock speed, install plugins, run homebrews and much more.'

modrobert writes: "TheFloW has released 3.65 HENkaku Enso Updater for PS Vita handhelds currently on firmware 3.60 which updates to a custom firmware with henkaku based on 3.65. This gives you the possibility to access the PSN store (as long as Sony allow it) and play games released for firmwares 3.61-3.65. The drawbacks are that you will be unable to downgrade back to 3.60 if needed, and homebrew only compatible with 3.60 will fail on 3.65 (needs to be ported first). Also, if you for some reason end up with a semi-brick and need to reinstall the firmware you will be stuck on 3.65 without the ability to run homebrew."

modrobert writes: "motoharu has released psvgamesd which is an user application and kernel plugin for PS Vita that can produce game card dumps and run them. Shortly after Yifan Lu posted a comparison chart of current Vita dumpers with key points and general info. Lots of PS Vita hacking activity lately, all leading up to the final goal; to backup game dumps properly and play them. Thanks to all involved, much appreciated."

modrobert writes: "TheFloW has released NoNpDrm for PS Vita which is a plugin that allows you to bypass DRM protection on any PS Vita content. Quote TheFloW: 'I want you to be at work right now... eager to get home to try this new plugin and enjoy the FUCKING WEEKEND!' You can find the download here at EurAsia as well."

modrobert writes: "The Black Fin is a peer-to-peer game cart sharing device for PS Vita that was released in September 2016. Now the lead developer behind the Cobra Black Fin has partially leaked info from the project and shared his experience developing it with wololo.net. Quote: 'The hacker states he has 76GB of reverse engineering data related to the PS Vita (the bulk of it being dumps, logs, but also, he says, some juicy stuff), the result of 4 years of work on the cobra blackfin project.' Apparently the developer never got paid by the Cobra producer. Quote: 'Unfortunately, I was stupid and too trusting, and the contract was for payment on delivery of the product and the guy running the Cobra business sc*** me of over 4 years of work by not paying after I delivered the product.' What I remember about the Black Fin was that Sony changed something in firmware 3.60 which pretty much killed the product just before launch as it only supported firmware 3.57 and below. Another drawback was that you had to rely on P2P servers for non owned games, this infrastructure depends on having many active users sharing games which turned the product into a Catch-22 situation due to the firmware limitation and relatively high price. The final nail in the coffin for Black Fin was HENkaku which is a free homebrew exploit enabling softmod released by team molecule not long after product launch.

modrobert writes: "Looks like I missed out on some news again. After completion of the psvsd card adapter project, Yifan Lu has posted an extensive article with the design files how to build a microSD card adapter connected via USB internally for PS Vita 3G which replaces the internal 3G modem. The whole build process is explained in great detail making this a suitable project for beginners getting into electronics hardware design. Quote Yifan Lu: 'In order to become more familiar with hardware design as well as understand how USB works on the Vita, I thought it would be fun to create a custom Vita USB device that fits on the modem port. The main reason I chose this port aside from the other USB ports is that it is the easiest to build.'

modrobert writes: "Davee just tweeted about the release of Henkaku Enso by team molecule (Davee, Proxima, Yifan Lu, xyz) which is a custom firmware (CFW) for PS Vita with original firmware (OFW) 3.60. Quote: 'HENkaku Ensō is the evolution of the HENkaku jailbreak that opened the PS Vita and PSTV to a new universe of customization and user created content. Install it once and your Vita will be permanently hacked--no need to apply it after each reboot. Just enable HENkaku, install the following vpk, launch it, and follow the on-screen instructions.'

modrobert writes: "The FloW has released a plugin for the PS Vita web browser which removes the download content restriction originally limited to media files. This plugin allows you to download any files from the web browser to ux0:download. Only content with the 'Content-Length' entity-header field is currently supported."

modrobert writes: "Yifan Lu has started a project on Indiegogo to fund a 3G to microSD card adapter for hacked PS Vita handhelds. Quote: 'The Idea: Vita memory cards are too expensive and it would be nice to be able to use a microSD card. The 3G feature is pretty useless. Combing those two thoughts and I decided 'what if we replace that modem with USB storage?' This works because the Vita's modem port is simply a USB 2.0 port that uses the miniPCIe form factor. A hacked Vita running 3.60 has the ability to load custom drivers, and it is just a matter of putting all the pieces together.'

modrobert writes: "nowhere everywhere (best twitter name ever?) has announced enso.henkaku.xyz which by the looks of it is a persistent version of Henkaku for PS Vita loaded at boot. This is work in progress currently developed by team molecule (Davee, Proxima, Yifan Lu, xyz). If you know more about this project feel free to comment, would be nice with an in-depth technical explanation instead of speculation.

[source: yifan.lu] The Vitaís Content Manager allows you to backup and restore games, saves, and system settings. These backups are encrypted (but not signed!) using a key derived in the F00D processor. While researching into F00D, xyz and Proxima stumbled upon a neat trick that lets you obtain this secret key and that has inspired me to write a set of tools to manipulate CMA backups. The upshot is that with these tools, you can modify backups for any Vita system including 3.63 and likely all future firmware. This does not mean you can run homebrew, but does enable certain tricks like disabling the PSTV whitelist or swapping X/O buttons.

modrobert writes: "The PS Vita RSA modulus and exponent keys have been posted in the HENkaku wiki (mirror) by St4rk. I don't know what these keys are good for, if you do, let me know in the comments. Thanks goes to Joonie for the heads up."

[source: wololo.net] The Vita hacking scene started boiling earlier today as the news spread that developer xyz, a member of team molecule, has released what is named the first public F00D hack for the PS Vita.

What is F00D?

F00D is considered to be the "level 0" of the PS Vita security chain. Security checks on FOOD happen before other systems are even accessed. It is believed that exploiting F00D could lead to a permanent hack, that possibly couldnít be patched without a hardware upgrade of the PS Vita.

YifanLu, one of the hackers behind the HENkaku Vita hack, has stated recently that he would focus his reverse engineering efforts on F00D moving forward. This was followed by lots of progress from various hackers in January, including a deeper understanding of the F00D protocol.

What was just released by team Molecule?

Iím seeing lots of speculation on the source code that was released by xyz a few hours ago. As Iím still waiting for a comment by xyz himself, Iíll have to speculate a bit on my own, and will be sure to update this article once the members of Team molecule publicly bash my complete ignorance :)

modrobert writes: "The PS Vita PFS keys have been posted in the HENkaku wiki (mirror) by St4rk. So what are the PFS keys? Quote Yifan Lu: 'The second layer of encryption is PFS. All game data (images, textures, executables, etc) are encrypted with PFS. PFS key is derived from a passphrase chosen by the developer. This layer is decrypted when a game is mounted.' Thanks goes to Joonie for the heads up."

modrobert writes: "RichDevX have a row of recent tweets announcing the progress on his SD card bridge device for the PS Vita memory card slot. Besides the breakout adapter which was finished long ago, it looks like he has completed the VHDL (or Verilog) FPGA simulation testing of the device hardware successfully. There are few posts with signal waveforms posted from the design tool, and he even had the PS Vita recognize a real 4GB SD card through the FPGA device which can be seen in this video. Quote RichDevX: 'I still need to figure out how to increase the storage :P 4GB for now, I only have a 4GB card, it shouldn't be hard to figure out :P ' I can't see any logic analyzer (or oscilloscope) signal output posted for the real device under test so far, or any photos of the FPGA development board setup (only the breakout adapter), but that might be kept private for now. [UPDATE: Just got this photo of the development board linked by RichDevX, thanks!] The project looks promising indeed, soon there will be no need to buy expensive PS Vita memory cards.

modrobert writes: "TheFloW has released 6.61 Adrenaline for PS Vita which is a tool that modifies the official PSP Emulator using taiHEN CFW framework to make it run a PSP 6.61 custom firmware. Quote: 'Thanks to the power of taiHEN, Adrenaline can inject custom code into the IPL which allows unsigned code to run at boottime.' Thanks goes to GaryOPA for the heads up. Read on for the whole release announcement..."

[source: Davee @ lolhax.org] Firstly, my congratulations to the HENkaku KOTH solvers: Mike H. and st4rk. I hope you guys enjoyed the KOTH and gained meaningful experience from the challenge. As promised, we will release the source of HENkaku. Furthermore, youíve probably heard about taiHEN - the latest release from team molecule. Maybe youíve read Yifan Luís excellent blog post, explored the taiHEN website and even tested out the taiHENkaku beta but still feel somewhat disappointed in the release. Don't worry, I knew this would be met with mixed expectations. Here I will try to explain the high level decisions behind taiHENís vision.

[source: yifan.lu] Ever since I first bought the Vita, I have dreamed of running a custom firmware on it. I donít mean just getting kernel code running. I want an infrastructure for adding hooks and patches to the system. I want a system for patching that was properly designed (or actually has a design), clean, efficient, and easy to use. That way, firmware patches arenít a list of hard coded offset and patches. Iíve seen hacks that busy loops the entire RAM looking for a version string pattern so it can replace it with a custom text. Iíve seen hacks that redirect the ďopenĒ syscall so every file open path is string compared with a list of files to redirect. The examples go on and on. Needless to say, good software design is not a strong point for console hacking. For HENkaku, we did not commit any major software development sins, but the code was not perfect. It had hard coded offsets everywhere, abuse of C types, and lots of one-off solutions to problems but it got the job done. Part of the reason we didnít want to release the source right away was that we didnít want people to build on that messy code-base (the other reason was the KOTH challenge). I remember the dark days of 3DS hacking where every homebrew that needed kernel access would just bundle in the exploit code. This is why I decided to create taiHEN.

[source: yifan.lu] When HENkaku was first released, we posed to the community the KOTH challenge to get more hackers interested in the Vita. This week, two individuals have separately completed the challenge and are the new kings of Vita hacking! Mike H. and st4rk both proved that they have the final encryption key, showing that they solved the kernel ROP chain. I highly recommend reading their respective posts as they give some great insight into how hacking works. I also know of a third group who might have also completed the challenge but wishes to keep quiet for now. Congratuations to them too!

[source: The Zett @ wololo.net] Famous PS Vita developer TheFloW has managed to get full access to the PS Vitaís PSP emulator, which basically enables you to run any custom PSP content via the PS Vitaís built-in Playstation Portable emulator, including eCFWs such as ARK and (theoretically) TN-V. He was searching for a proper person to take over the project, preferable a person who knows one or another thing about PSP exploiting, and it turns out that no one else than our good old friend Coldbird is going to take care of this!

[source: yifan.lu] When HENkaku came out exactly a month ago from today, we posed a challenge to the scene to reverse our hack. The reason for this decision rather than to just post our writeups immediately and take all the limelight is because we believe that the Vita is a device that is so unique in its security features that we wonít be doing it proper justice by just revealing the flaws. We want people to know about how good the security is rather than just point out the mistakes made. In doing so, we hoped that hackers new and old will take the challenge and have fun with it. Today, one such challenger by the name of st4rk completed the second third of the challenge. He has written a detailed post on how he reversed the payload and I recommend you read it right now.

[source: yifan.lu] Itís been almost a month since the release of HENkaku. We now have over 100,000 unique installs! (That number excludes re-installs required after rebooting.) To celebrate, we are pushing the third major update and it includes features that many users have been asking for. For the impatient, you can get it right now by rebooting your Vita and installing HENkaku from https://henkaku.xyz/.

modrobert writes: "Motoharu has been researching different ways to dump the PS Vita carts for the past six months. You can find his impressive PSVCD research over at GitHub. I uploaded a dump/backup of the repository to the download section here just in case, you never know what will be taken down these days. The material is extensive and includes documentation, schematics to build custom adapter boards, photos, pinouts, etc."

modrobert writes: "Well, it was pretty much expected, yet it still sucks. Sony aka 'the giant enemy crab' has released PS Vita firmware 3.61 via PSN/SEN which effectively patches HENkaku. If you want to load homebrew and backups on your PS Vita then refrain from updating, in other words stay on firmware 3.60 for now."

[source: yifan.lu] We released HENkaku a week ago and were blown away by the reception. There has been over 25k unique installs and every day new homebrew are being announced. This is all thanks to those who contributed to the SDK project back when Rejuvenate was announced. Without a working toolchain for developers and a couple of working homebrews at the time of HENkakuís launch, I doubt the reception would have been as popular.

Since the release, there have been a couple of questions weíve been getting over and over again: When will this work on older firmware versions? How does HENkaku work? Where is the source code? I am going to address these questions in a bit. First, I want to thank Sony. It is common for hackers to laugh and poke fun at companies on the receiving end of hacks. But I think thatís unfairĖsecurity issues are a learning experience for all sides and we should all be thankful for it. For myself, I started my work on the Vita since its North America release in 2012. Although Davee beat me in hacking the PSP compatibility mode and getting ROP on WebKit, I was the first to run native code and dump the memory through PSM. Since then, Davee, Proxima, I, and later xyz (collectively ďmoleculeĒ) have been working on the Vita on and off through the years. It is a tremendous learning experience both working with these smart individuals and getting my hands dirty with real world hacks. I think I owe a large portion of what I know about security due to my work on the Vita. It has, hands down, the most well designed security infrastructure of any consumer electronics device. In 2012, the iPhone, Android, and 3DS were no match. Even today, I think the Vita rivals the security of devices in the market.

[source: yifan.lu] For the last couple of months, molecule (composed of I along with Davee, Proxima, and xyz) have been working hard to bring you an easy-to-use homebrew solution. The result is HENkaku, the first HEN for the Vita. Since the release of Rejuvenate a year ago, developers have created tons of wonderful emulators, games, and apps for the Vita. Unfortunately, Rejuvenate is hard to set up, has many annoying limitations, and supports only an older firmware version. As a result, we recommended Rejuvenate only to developers who wish for an unofficial way to write apps for the Vita. When I first announced Rejuvenate and the call for an open toolchain, I emphasized that the SDK must be binary compatible with the Vitaís native loader. I published the specifications document and some gracious developers took up the task and wrote latest toolchain now for HENkaku compatibility.

[source: maxconsole.com] The warez scene group 'PSiCO' has been recently releasing proper PlayStation Vita game rips of some retail cartridges onto the underground 'net for those that own the recently released Cobra BlackFin.

[source: cobra-blackfin.com] News Update! We have been hard at work finalizing the BlackFin software the past few months. We are pleased to announce that this is now complete and the BlackFin hardware system is now available to order with immediate shipment available :) We have uploaded the BlackFin-1.0 software package and the BlackFin user manual to the downloads section. Samples are being sent to review sites over the next few days, so you can expect to see reviews appearing on related sites in the coming days. Resellers may contact us to reserve stocks or place an order.

[source: email and cobra-blackfin.com] We are about to release the worldís first flash card for PS Vita! The website has just been launched at cobra-blackfin.com and details how the device works and what is included in the bundle. A video of the development board for our product can be seen in action here. The Black Fin allows Vita and Vita Slim Wifi and 3G users to share their Vita games over the internet. The Cobra Black Fin Emulator card stores game ISO's on Micro SD and the Black Fin Card is then inserted into the Vita/Vita Slim console. When connected to the Black Fin servers authentication of the Vita game is performed by matching the ISO on your Micro SD card to the same original game running on a peers' Black Fin reader connected to his PC and the Black Fin servers or friends' servers. P2P game sharing for Playstation Vita.

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